Every euro spent on the website is a euro not spent on the programme.
That is the real objection, and it is a good one. So here is the number first, the argument second, and an honest answer about whether you should be on Drupal at all.
Start with the free check
Send the web address. Back comes the version your site runs, the date its security updates stopped, and one fixed price — on a single page, in plain words, written so it can go to your board without translation. Costs nothing, commits you to nothing, and includes an honest “yours is fine, do nothing” when that is true.
Why this is not only an IT question
Your site probably holds a donation form, a subscriber list, and possibly accounts for supporters. That is personal information belonging to people who trusted your organisation with money. When software stops receiving security fixes, the weaknesses in it are published and the fixes are not — and a breach at a foundation costs more than a breach at a business, because trust is the whole asset.
That is the sentence to take to the board, and it is the one they will understand without a single technical term.
The honest version: you may not need Drupal
Nobody in my position says this out loud, so let me. If your site is in practice twenty pages, a news feed and a donate button, then Drupal is more than the job needs and something simpler will cost you less to run. That is a real answer and the free check will give it to you if it applies.
What makes the difference is the archive. If partners, journalists and funders link to your reports and publications, leaving the platform means rebuilding every one of those addresses by hand, and the ones that get missed go dead. Moving inside Drupal keeps them exactly as they are. Losing the archive tends to frighten people here more than the invoice does — and reasonably so.
What it costs, and how to defend it
Most foundations land in the lower band. One figure for the whole project, agreed before it starts — not an hourly rate, because an hourly rate is the thing you cannot defend to a board.
| Size | Typical of | Price | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small | Up to ~300 pages, one design, donation form, mailing list | €8,000–12,000 | 5–7 weeks |
| Standard | 300–2,000 pages, reports archive, events, several forms | €15,000–30,000 | 8–12 weeks |
On Drupal 10 it is an update rather than a move, from €1,500. The check says which one you are looking at.
Three things included, because otherwise you pay for them later
Your donation form and your subscriber base move across and keep working — that is the part worth being nervous about, so it is checked on a private copy before anything switches over. Your staff get a session and a short written guide, so ordinary edits stop being something you have to buy. And every existing address keeps working, which is what protects the links in other people’s articles about you.
If you are applying for a digitalisation grant
Several funders will pay for exactly this work, and applications ask for a specific cost and a justification rather than a range. The written plan from the free check is built to be attached: a fixed figure, the published end-of-support date, and the risk described in language a grant assessor reads without a technical glossary. Say in the check that it is for an application and it comes back in that shape.
Budget closed until the autumn? That is the usual blocker here, and it is not a refusal — it is a date. The brief is built for exactly that: a published deadline, one figure and the risk in plain words, on one page.
Not a foundation? The same offer, written for the sector you are in:
Universities and colleges · Agencies needing a Drupal subcontractor · Everyone else